Is Donald Trump A Democrat?

 Politics  No Responses »
Oct 022016
 

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I have said it before (quite possibly here): US politics sometimes seems like some kind of bizarre reality media show put on by the US to entertain the rest of the world. No serious political system could be that dysfunctional? Could it?

But this post is going to concentrate on the just one of the possible candidates (despite the media reports there are lots) – Donald Trump. It might be a little tin foil haty to ask this, but is anyone sure that he really isn’t a democrat supporter running as a spoiler? I mean the guy is so over the top as a buffoon, it seems like the most likely cause of his behaviour is that he really is a Democrat supporter who is running as a Republican to remove any possibility that the Republicans can conjure up a credible candidate.

Just look at some of the things he’s said :-

Do you mind if I sit back a little? Because your breath is very bad.

Just a silly example to start with. Most of us have thought this from time to time, but usually have second thoughts before opening our mouths. Now why do we re-think and decide not to say it? Because going around being nasty to people without consideration is indicative of a certain level of sociopathology. What is worse is that it is indicative of a dumb sociopath, as most people with enough sense to keep breathing without being constantly reminded to do so, will realise that acting like a dick will not win friends and influence people.

The point is that you can’t be too greedy.

Really? Kind of symptomatic again.

All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.

Creepy. Even ignoring political correctness, the later sentence implies an horrendous arrogance to the man.

If people can just pour into the country illegally, you don’t have a country.

Now there may well be problems with illegal immigration (although personally I doubt the problems outweigh the advantages), but the idea that you’ll lose you country because of immigration? Ridiculous. Illegal immigrants are nowhere near populous nor powerful enough to take over your country, and by the time their descendants are, they won’t be illegal immigrants any more but they will be you.

Scare mongering is the tactic of the lowest form of politician, and we all know how low they can get.

People love me. And you know what, I have been very successful. Everybody loves me.

No they don’t. Some people may love you, but not all. To think so is extremely delusional.

As for successful, it all depends on your criteria for success but most of his alleged success has taken place in the property development field which is notoriously easy if you already had money to invest (he did). There are a considerable number of serious commentators out there who question his business acumen.

I feel a lot of people listen to what I have to say.

What he neglected to mention is why people listen. Sometimes it’s to fall about pissing themselves with laughter.

That’s one of the nice things. I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can put $600 million myself. That’s a huge advantage. I must tell you, that’s a huge advantage over the other candidates.

Which is of course another condemnation of the US political system which allows the rich and powerful to buy their way to power.

Sure, sure, I’d like to see Apples built in the United States, not built in China. I’d like to see them have factories in the United States. At least partially. They make nothing in the United States, virtually.

I’m reminded of King Canute (or Cnut) trying to hold back the tide. Fundamentally China is successful at producing mass market goods because it has very low labour costs. By the time you reduce US labour costs to the level of the Chinese, you will be looking at a revolution; the myth of the American dream won’t survive starvation.

As for nothing being built in the US, Trump needs to get out of his tower and go and take a look. There’s plenty being built in the US, but you won’t find cheap consumer goods (unless you count that made with slave labour; sorry I meant prisoner labour).

As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.

I hear the LGBTQ community has more to worry about the violence and oppression of a hateful domestic ideology.

Thanks to Hillary Clinton, Iran is now the dominant Islamic power in the Middle East, and on the road to nuclear weapons. Hillary Clinton’s support for violent regime change in Syria has thrown the country into one of the bloodiest civil wars anyone has ever seen – while giving ISIS a launching pad for terrorism against the West.

This is not the only quote about how Hillary Clinton is responsible for all of the world’s ills (and probably the four horsemen of the apocalypse too). Fact is that no foreign policy is going to cure the world’s ills; you can only respond to what other countries and people are doing. Foreign intervention in a country can make an existing situation worse but not create that situation.

build a permanent border wall between the US and Mexico that Mexico “must pay for”. The plan proposes various sticks to force Mexico to cooperate, such as impounding all remittance payments to Mexico from illegal wages earned in the US.

Ah yes! The infamous wall to stop immigration from Mexico. If we assume the wall will cost $1.5 million per kilometre, covering the whole 3,200 kilometres of the US-Mexico border will cost a cool $4.8 billion although this is probably a wild underestimate of the cost given that the 2006 Security Act allocated $1.6 billion for just a fence, and critics claim that it will need at least $4.8 billion more than is allocated. And that is for a fence not a wall.

And why should Mexico pay for it? They are not getting the benefit.

And you can use all the long words you like, but “impounding remittance payments” is just theft.

And that is of course just a quick taste of the inanities that Trump has come out with. There are those who excuse these comments by claiming a blunt honest man is better than another slimy politician. But there is a difference between bluntness, honesty and just plain stupidity. And having a stupid man in charge of the White House (and all that goes with it) is definitely not a good thing.

But The NHS Is … Socialism!!

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Sep 122016
 

The title of this post came from a tongue-in-cheek post on a forum I sometimes post on, and this post is not about the NHS nor it is even about socialism.

What it is really about is the over the top reaction you get when anything even tangentially related to socialism crops up anywhere someone from the US can see it. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that this is a variant on Godwin’s law whereby if someone accuses something of being socialist, they instantly win and condemn the “thing”.

To which I want to respond: grow up and think for yourself.

First of all, socialism is not the same as communism and in turn, communism is not the same as the kind of communism as practised by the Soviets. It is possible that communism inevitably leads to the kind of totalitarianism that the Soviets were so keen on, although there are those who disagree. But this is not about what sort of government you have.

It’s about how to run certain things. How do we pay for, and run certain services we have decided are essential such as :-

  • Health care (of individuals)
  • Public health (of society as a whole – vaccinations, sewage, water supply, etc.)
  • Police and justice system.
  • Defence

There are plenty of things that we have historically decided that should be paid for by the community as a whole, and be run by our government (in a very loose sense the community itself), including many of the items listed above. Even the most rabid anti-socialist is unlikely to start bleating about how the government is interfering with the private sector when talking about defence.

Yet suggest something new should be paid for by the community as a whole – such as the health care system – and Americans will start shouting “Socialism” and condemn the notion without looking at the merits.

By all means condemn a new community-funded notion if there are obvious problems with it, but to condemn it because it might be something suggested by a socialist government is ideologically-driven stupidity of the first order.

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Scrapping The Human Rights Act

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Aug 232016
 

There are moves afoot to scrap the UK’s Human Rights Act.

Think about that for a moment. There is a minister of justice who wants to take away your human rights.

Whether or not you like the ECHR, the fact that a British politician wants to scrap the Human Rights Act is somewhat worrying. They want to take away our human rights. It is all very well saying that the British authorities never behave in ways that would threaten our human rights, and we have both common law and traditions that protect our human rights. But scrapping the Human Rights Act sends a signal that we do not need human rights; a signal that may not be picked up and acted on for years or decades, but the signal is still there.

Now if they were merely going to modify the Human Rights Act, that would be fine. I am sure there are parts that go a bit too far and others that do not go far enough. The key thing is that changing the Human Rights Act; even improving it, sends a different signal no matter what those changes are. That signal is that we do believe in human rights.

And that is a good message to send.

The New Defence

The New Defence

USA: Racial Tensions Or Wealth Inequality?

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Jul 172016
 

As seen from afar, the USA seems to be having a problem with racial tensions – police shootings, protests, “Black Lives Matter“, etc., and racial inequality such as found at Facebook. Nobody with any sense doubts that there is racism in the USA – everywhere there are bone-headed bigots worrying about the colour of the dead stuff that keeps the squishy bits on the inside.

But we may be too quick to assume that it is simply racism; many of the symptoms could well be caused by wealth inequality and relative poverty.

The wealthy (and their children) are more like to succeed because of a number of factors :-

  1. They are more able to afford private education – either to supplement state education or to replace it with presumably higher quality private education.
  2. They are more able to afford higher education; even though it is possible for those who cannot afford it to get loans to pay for higher education in the USA, this will leave those in debt at a disadvantage.
  3. Social networks (the “old boy network”) that the wealthy have access to includes greater opportunities at internships at organisations that give their children greater opportunities.
  4. And internships themselves seem designed to favour the children of the wealthy – unpaid work in the hope of getting a better job at the end of it is something that is only a suitable option if you already have money to live on.

There are those who point at people from relatively poor backgrounds who have “made it”, and there’s certainly no doubt that exceptional people can succeed whatever their background. But most of us are not exceptional.

Relative poverty and lack of opportunity can easily lead to frustration with the system, and amongst the criminally inclined a tendency to resort to crime – those with more wealth or more opportunities will not resort to crime to the same extent.

So does the USA have a racism problem or a wealth inequality problem? I’m not sure what the answer is, but I would not be at all surprised if the answer is both.

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World War I: Not About Freedom

 History, Politics  No Responses »
Jul 012016
 

It’s the 100-year anniversary of the Battle of the Somme this morning, and there are those commemorating the event by claiming they all died for our freedom. Well that may have been what they thought they were fighting for, but that’s arguably not what the war was about. At least for the British, there were no real risk of invasion at the beginning of the war.

There is still arguments to be had over the causes of World War 1, but a very high level view indicates military adventurism by the Austria-Hungary empire in the powder-keg of Europe (the Balkans), combined with interlocking defence treaties that amounted to the mutually-assured destruction of the 19th century. To a great extent, Britain was fighting because France was fighting, and they were fighting because Russia was fighting who were fighting because Austria-Hungary were invading their allies in the Balkans – Serbia. Germany was pulled into the mess because of it’s alliance with Austria-Hungary.

If that sounds like a confusing mess, you don’t know the half of it. Not least because I have not mentioned Belgium.

Why does this matter? Particularly since I am implying that the sacrifice of the WW1 casualties was not for a particularly noble cause.

The first reason for remembering, is that those who thought they were fighting for a noble cause deserve to be remembered.

Secondly we need to remember just how stupid war is, and particularly that people are still arguing over exactly how and why it started. There may be justifiable wars – even wars that are not strictly defensive. But if you are not entirely sure why the war is being fought, it is definitely a war you should not be in.

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